Another 23 co-owners of a property at the centre of the Gaffarena land scandal want to join the case filed by Joseph Muscat as MP and the Attorney General to reverse the multimillion-euro deal, court documents show.

This means that most of the co-owners of the Valletta property that was partly expropriated by the government have now come together to protect their rights. The court hearing the case has already authorised a similar number of other co-owners to be considered as parties to it.

In a court application filed this week, signed by lawyer Carlo Bisazza, the 23 co-owners argued that the government was claiming to have expropriated a half undivided share of 36, Old Mint Street, Valletta, from all the co-owners and not just from Mark Gaffarena.

They insisted that an undivided share was co-owned and it did not belong solely to Mr Gaffarena. They complained that they were left out of the deal despite the fact that the government now owned part of their share.

The co-owners insisted they had a direct interest in the proceedings of the ongoing court case. The application filed on behalf of the property owners was signed by Dr Carlo Bisazza. 

The deal, exposed by the Times of Malta a year ago, cost taxpayers over €3 million in cash and property. According to the co-owners, the sole beneficiary was Mr Gaffarena, because they got nothing even though the government now owned part of their share.

The deal was subject to an investigation by the National Audit Office, which found there had been “collusion” between the Land Department, Mr Gaffarena and former planning parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon, who eventually resigned.

The Auditor General also concluded that government officials had been “secretly cooperating to the detriment of the other property co-owners”.

Following the investigation, the Prime Minister, in his capacity as an MP, filed a lawsuit against the government. Mr Gaffarena’s law-yer said it was “an exercise being done for political purposes”.